


canonized for love

by alovelylight



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Fluff, James is a romantic softie, Love Confessions, M/M, Poetry, Thomas is so good and beautiful as per fucking usual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-16
Updated: 2018-01-16
Packaged: 2019-03-05 14:55:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13390230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alovelylight/pseuds/alovelylight
Summary: “If only they could see us—”“They don’t matter. You said as much yourself.”“They don’t diminish you in my eyes, but they could make villains out of us.”“I would ground their fiction to the ground. ‘And if unfit for tombs and hearse — Our legend be, it will be fit for verse.’”(James and Thomas being love-struck fools and quoting John Donne at each other)





	canonized for love

**Author's Note:**

> This poem is The Canonization by John Donne. 
> 
> I thought it was apt for pre-Nassau James and Thomas because the poem discusses how love is pure and good, and that there's no reason for the discrimination and hatefulness that people may target at it since love itself causes no wars or destruction. 
> 
> Then I thought about how tragic it is, for James' exile to drive him to commit acts of violence in order to avenge his lost love. However, this doesn't mean the nature of their love is the destructive force; the forbidding of their relationship is the real monster, hiding beneath the gilded ideals of so-called civilization.

James was the moon in sleep; beaming with quiet light, dusted in rare beauty. The very picture of serenity. As a boy, Thomas always longed to climb the perch of his walls and fly away, so far away that he could reach out and bear the moon on his palm. Now it seemed like he had it, in the very form of poetry incarnate himself.

Perhaps prodded by the intensity of Thomas’ eyes, James came to wake. “Can’t you get to sleep?” he yawned, 

“I’m incapable of it; I’d miss this.”

James raised an eyebrow. “Miss what, exactly?”

“Seeing you in peace,” he brushed a kiss against his forehead. “Bereft of the world’s weight, pulled into a state of bliss.”

“I see your daydreams have followed you into night,” James’ hand drifted towards Thomas’ hair, gently caressing the spot there. “But I do find it both endearing and preposterous that you  _ don’t  _ seem to think that my state of bliss has been derived from being in your bed.”

“Then perhaps you should remind me more,” he kissed James again, a puff of laughter seeping into the fold of the other’s freckled skin. 

James straddled his hips, still cutting an an impressive figure in the shadows. “I love you,” Thomas gasped, his hands settling over the strong bones of his lover’s hips. “If only they could see us—”

“They don’t matter. You said as much yourself.”

“They don’t diminish you in my eyes, but they could make villains out of us.”

“I would ground their fiction to the ground.  _ ‘And if unfit for tombs and hearse — Our legend be, it will be fit for verse,’ _ ” James pressed hot, desperate kisses onto Thomas’ throat and neck. “ _ ‘And if no piece of chronicle we prove—’ _ ” 

“Since  _ when  _ did you appreciate Donne?” he laughed. “I thought you said yourself that you had no taste for the ‘sentimental and florid.’”

“Since you turned me into a hopeless romantic idiot, if you must know.” 

“ _ ‘We’ll build sonnets in pretty rooms,’ _ ” Thomas whispered, wounding his arms around James’ neck. “ _ ‘As well a well-wrought urn becomes — The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs.’ _ ”

“ _ ‘And by these hymns, all shall approve — Us canonized for Love.’ _ ”

Tonight, Thomas felt, they held infinity in their palms. For if James was built for the moon, Thomas was sure he himself was the tide that ran towards him, no matter the grains of time. 

 


End file.
